I'm a well-known turkey skeptic, but this reader's Thanksgiving menu is enough to convert me: For the last three years, turkey has gone from the least interesting part of our meal to the star. We get a heritage bird from...

Over at U.S. News and World Report, Robert Schlesinger attaches some more numbers to the rise of the filibuster: The fact of the matter is that the frequency of filibusters has increased by a factor of 50 since the days...

In the comments beneath my column applying behavioral economics to Thanksgiving, a couple of folks accuse me of trying to pretty much ban eating during the holiday, which is pretty obviously not the point of the column. In any case,...

It didn't fit in the last post, but I also wanted to quote this bit from David Leonhardt's column: Complaining that Congress and the White House aren’t doing enough to reduce the deficit is always a popular pundit game....

David Leonhardt has a great column today on all the cost-cutting opportunities still in the Senate bill. Liberals have a tendency to focus on the money that can be saved by a strong public plan, and it's true that that's...

Commenter WoodbridgeVA adds an important piece to the filibuster story: The major change in Senate rules that made possible the modern filibuster occurred under the leadership of Robert Byrd during his first stint as Majority Leader. Byrd introduced the concept...

Speaking of the obesity crisis, here's a Froot Loops commercial in which the point is that Froot Loops is a healthy part of a well-balanced diet. YouTube Video ResizerMySpace Layouts MySpace Codes MySpace Backgrounds They've got the kid dressed up...

Catherine Rampell assembles two maps that do a pretty good job explaining why obesity is, whether we like it or not, something the country needs to worry about, as opposed to something that individuals deal with entirely on their own....

This column originally appeared in the Food section. It happens every year. It's not that you resolve to be virtuous on Thanksgiving, just reasonable. Two plates of food, and no more. One piece of pie, and that's enough. But...

Mark Schmitt adds another perspective on the rise of the filibuster: In terms of culture and custom, the turning point was almost certainly the previous health-reform debate, in 1993 and 1994. That's when Bob Dole, then the majority leader, made...

That chart -- or, more accurately, collection of charts -- comes from Jackie Calmes and Michael Cooper, who pulled together a bunch of private forecasts to find what the analysts trusted by the all-powerful market thought the stimulus's effect...

One of the challenges in arguing about the use of the filibuster is that the filibuster has changed drastically in recent decades, but it's done so quietly. Quietly enough that people don't really understand that it's changed at all....

1) I didn't know this many tax policy resources could exist in one place at one time. 2) The winning entry in the Washington Post's pundit contest. 3) Could Wall Street actually lose in Congress? 4) Rep. Dave Obey is...

In the filibuster thread this morning, commenter Spotatl asked, "If you really just dislike the filibuster overall and not just because the democrats currently have the majority you would support doing away with it in 7 years when no one...

It's common these days to hear conservative Democrats say that they view procedural votes as indistinguishable from actual votes. Voting against a bill, and voting against allowing a vote on the bill, are exactly the same, they say. Bruce Bartlett...

Dana Milbank's column on the new mammography standards seems strangely sanguine about letting Congress shut down independent scientific processes just because it doesn't like the result. But for all his criticism of the panel, he doesn't really question the science....

Matt Yglesias and Kevin Drum are chewing over the hefty bipartisan support Bush got for his various domestic initiatives. The roll call is impressive: No Child Left Behind, the 2001 tax cut, the post-9/11 war resolution, Sarbanes-Oxley, McCain-Feingold, the...

Although the Texas Governor is weaker in his or her own state compared to most other governors in theirs, and that the Governor might be weaker than the Lieutenant Governor, the Governor of Texas is still possibly more powerful than...

Noam Scheiber defends Timothy Geithner against those demanding his resignation. Scheiber is right on the merits, I think, but the politics matter. Whether Geithner did his best against a bad hand, he created a public relations disaster by bailing out...

Writing the last post got me thinking a bit about Bill Frist's admirable willingness to trash the traditions of the Senate and pursue the interests of his party. Arlen Specter straying? Strip him of his committee chairmanship. Democrats filibustering...

Harry Reid gives Jay Rockefeller a hug. In comments, Eerac writes: There's a simple way the entire party can avoid being held hostage by a few centrists. Adopt Republican-style committee management and threaten to strip filibustering democrats of their chairmanships....

Neil Sinhababu asks a good question: Houston mayor Bill White [might] enter the race for Governor of Texas. This weakens [the Democrats'] position in the Senate race, as that's what White was running for before. On the Republican side, Sen....

Tom Toles: It has, however, been amusing to watch some conservatives argue that America is crying out for a much longer committee process and a much slower floor debate schedule on health care. If Americans were really so interested in...

Tim Fernholz gives voice to some slightly heretical thoughts about pulling Ben Bernanke's renomination as chairman of the Federal Reserve and replacing him with a more full-employment oriented leader, like Federal Reserve governor Janet Yellen. But no, you gasp!...

"Are progressives really willing to take their chances with a future GOP-controlled Senate empowered to pass whatever they have 51 votes for?" asks Scott Winship. "With the Supreme Court nominees who could be seated (to say nothing of other judgeships)?...

1) Corby Kummer's guide to turkey. 2) How Prop. 187 contributed to California's fiscal crisis. 3) Dennis Moore, a conservative Democrat from Kansas, is retiring next year. Will he start a trend? 4) Obama will set a target for America's...

James Galbraith points fingers: Technically it would have been fairly easy, 10 months ago, to get this bus back on the road. There could have been open-ended fiscal assistance to stop the budget hemorrhage of the states and cities. There...

A couple of weeks back, Matthew Yglesias had an insightful post noting that "by far the fastest way to end the war in Afghanistan would be to ask General McChrystal’s staff to produce a plan to make it deficit neutral...

[I]magine there's a big meeting with every member of the Democratic caucus in both chambers. You stand at the front of the room and make a presentation: "If health care reform falls apart after having come this far, tens of...

That used to be one of the slogans for health-care reform: Every American should have the same insurance choices that members of Congress have. This obscured, to some degree, that members of Congress don't have very interesting choices: Most of...

Here's Joe Lieberman's latest argument against the public option: "This is a radical departure from the way we've responded to the market in America in the past," Lieberman said Sunday on NBC's "Meet The Press." "We rely first on competition...

As I'm out in the Golden State for a couple of days, I'd like to spend some time reading about how truly and epically screwed California is. In particular, I'm looking for really good journalism -- magazine articles, deep blog...

Alton Brown explains why you should brine a turkey, and offers a logical proof of why stuffing is evil. YouTube Video Resizer In past years, I've waited till Thanksgiving, or the day before, to ask you all what you're making....

Jon Cohn surveys the final months of the health-care reform process: For progressives, victories are more likely to come in the form of ground not conceded than ground gained. Every day that legislation doesn’t get worse is a day to...

Kevin Hassett's review of Bruce Bartlett's new book critiquing the relevance of supply-side economics is an extraordinary document. The review appears in the National Review, and Hassett is a well-known conservative economist. Somewhat predictably, his review starts out straining to...

This is a good point from Fred Hiatt: [M]aybe the country isn't all that divided -- most of us would welcome common-sense improvements in health-care delivery and insurance -- but the system feeds on and exacerbates our differences. The advent...

The public option written into both the House and Senate bills is a pale shadow of the policy many liberals initially envisioned. Cut off from Medicare's payment rates and networks and limited to the small sliver of Americans eligible to...

Blanche Lincoln gave a real ripsnorter of a speech against the public option on Saturday. "I’ve already alerted the leader, and I’m promising my colleagues, that I’m prepared to vote against moving to the next stage of consideration as...

The front page of John McCain's web site reads: I remain committed to opposing any bill that puts your health care decisions in the hands of government bureaucrats while adding more than a trillion dollars to our country's deficit. Taxpayers...